Environmentalists’ citizenship behavior: Gen Zers’ eudaimonic environmental goal attainment

Abstract

This research explores the eudaimonic environmental pursuit of Generation Zers. Although how they can contribute to the environment has gained traction, extant tourism research in this regard largely lags behind. Drawing on self-determination and self-efficacy theories, this inquiry fills this void by proposing a model that delineates a motivation–behavior–goal mechanism to illuminate how pursuits for environmental sustainability can develop into self-actualization. Using an explanatory sequential design, we first undertook a survey-based investigation with data acquired through purposive sampling to sample Generation Zers who had attended a minimum of one green volunteer trip in the prior year. Results first unravel how eudaimonic environmental motivation can induce green travel involvement, leading to environmental citizenship. Exhibiting environmental citizenship presents an avenue to foster environmental goal attainment and subsequent self-actualization, synthesizing a path that depicts behavior-goal-actualization of oneself. The moderating effect of environmental self-efficacy is also warranted. A post-hoc study was followed using semistructured interviews to explore Generation Zers’ eudaimonic environment pursuits and goal attainment. Our findings pave the way for a better understanding of behavioral engagement and pursuits of this rising cohort towards a greener tomorrow. It lays the groundwork to bring personal growth needs for environmental goal attainment to light.

Keywords:

• Generation Z
• eudaimonic environmental pursuit
• environmental citizenship
• sustainability
• volunteer tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72074230) and the Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Guangdong Province China (No. GD20XGL50).